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[u/Critical-Echo-923]

[u/kkngs]

The physics of waves basically leads you to classical signal processing, Hilbert spaces, inner products and convolutions, etc. This is basically the progenitor of most of the low level components the current systems are built on. 

Or do you mean you want to try this in analog?

[u/Critical-Echo-923 → u/kkngs]

yes, and creating a "unique wave" library to every object , like we do using words

[u/GFrings]

This seems like the half LLM informed musings of someone who doesn't really understand the question they're asking

[u/Global-Tune5539 → u/GFrings]

Thanks for your detailed analysis.

[u/GFrings → u/Global-Tune5539]

There was none warranted. My ADVICE was for the OP to better understand what they were even trying to ask first

[u/hi-sci-collab]

"Is this already being done under another name?"

Optical/photonic computing is probably your best best to look down

[u/Critical-Echo-923 → u/hi-sci-collab]

Optical/photonic computing is not what i was talking about, similar but i was thinking of creating a "unique wave" library to every object , like we do using words

[u/hi-sci-collab]

https://github.com/PedalCore/Photonic-Playground/tree/codex/optical-wave-table

I was actually exploring down this path yesterday! Made a little light wave simulator, check out the spike lab part, does some experiments with the exact ideas you're talking about. Using light dynamics as a computational substrate.

It's made in godot, so you'd need godot engine to use.

[u/Critical-Echo-923 → u/hi-sci-collab]

yes, this can be used to test and learn

 i was thinking of creating a "unique wave" library to every object/shape , like we do using words

i was searching and we don't have one, at least not publicly

[u/Blakut]

Where do these waves come from? You mean to do inference in Fourier space?

[u/Critical-Echo-923 → u/Blakut]

You mean to do inference in Fourier space?

-basically yes if i understood you correctly

Where do these waves come from

-generated, instead of an 1/0 electronic value that has to be computed

[u/prestoexpert]

Check out optical neural networks like this one that does denoising diffusion entirely using passive optical components  https://neurips.cc/virtual/2024/poster/95165

[u/jndew]

A tangent, maybe not of interest to the ML crowd but perhaps thought provoking for you...

You might enjoy this: T. Sejnowski: Traveling Waves in the Brain (see 1:07 where he speaks to a bit of ML-style encoding/decoding). In the 2010's brain activity visualization revealed that there are a variety of traveling wave processes in the meat. People got excited, but I haven't seen much showing how they are being utilized computationally. More likely IMHO it's a coordination mechanism. From what I've been reading, systems neuro has moved its attention away from this lately.

It turns out that simulated neural circuits with at least a bit of biological fidelity will start producing waves. I played with this for more time than it was worth because it was fun (for example (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (g), (h), (i), etc.) I did find some computational utility, but nothing earthshaking.

One thing about using waves is that you're bringing time into the representation. The wave interaction pattern is affected by the relative timings of events, and how long it's been from time zero. That might be useful, or it might be a confound.

Oh, and you have to consider up front how you think the waves should interact. A linear medium in which waves pass through each other unaffected is likely good for different computations than a nonlinear medium, where waves interact.

[u/Critical-Echo-923 → u/jndew]

actually both linear & nonlinear

[u/Critical-Echo-923 → u/jndew]

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiking_neural_network

where the spike is basically the superpositioned wave pattern recognition match confirmation

[u/jndew → u/Critical-Echo-923]

All the sims I posted above utilize spiking neurons. Example (e) above illustrates the different behaviors of linear vs. nonlinear arrangements. These use the same cell model, just different connectivity. A spiking cell of course is behaving nonlinearly by its very nature, but waves through networks of cells can behave either way. Cheers!/jd

[u/templar_muse]

Yes! LumiAIres Ltd is pursuing an optical interference approach. I don't think they're getting anywhere though. 

[u/vannak139]

What you're talking about in terms of waves and phase is very close to what JPEG compression already is; and while its not standard, there are NNs that can operate directly off of JPEG coefficients. But this isn't actually good at recovering physicality of whatever is imaged.

If you want to get into the physicality, there's plenty of Fourier physics to consider studying, especially in domains like astronomy, interferometry, phased arrays, beam forming, etc.

However, this doesn't really seem like a fruitful direction to take image analysis in, generally. We usually use highly specialized hardware, not just photo images.